Mysterious World TV’s filmmaker Devon Belanger, of Sedona, is calling on residents of the Village of Oak Creek and Sedona to submit their paranormal experiences for inclusion in her new project “Strange Sedona” as part of an effort to market what the Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau refers to as the “wellness” category.

“The paranormal is of interest to our visitors,” Sedona Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Michelle Conway said. “Our research indicates that nearly 40% of our visiting public surveyed participated in spiritual or metaphysical pursuits during their visit to Sedona. Sedona has always had a draw in [wellness] which includes spiritual, metaphysical, spas, even the paranormal, lumped broadly.”

Sedona hotel occupancy is down 7.2% when compared to pre-COVID- 19 numbers and 5.5% compared to last year, and the situation is similar for retail and restaurants, Conway said.

“You have a lot of practitioners there, a lot of metaphysical stores,” Belanger said. “Typically, when you’re doing the paranormal, if you’re doing ghost tours … when that tour is over, what do people do? They go to the restaurants, or if you tell them a certain store allegedly has a degree of high strangeness, then in daylight hours, people want to go and visit that store. There is a huge audience for this topic.” 

Belanger sees a lack of programming focused on ghosts in the Sedona area as one potential opportunity for local tourism enterprises to expand their efforts to cater to the superstitious. 

Strange Sedona

Belanger ’s plan for Mysterious World TV is to release a docu-drama called “Strange Sedona” in order to bring in “curiosity seekers” as one strategy to counter the decline in tourism.

“I just really wanted to cover everything that makes Sedona different from your run-of-themill city,” Belanger said

“The History Channel did a short episode here recently. That’s good because that lays the foundation. Once that episode’s out you’ve got people’s attention. Now, if we can go deeper and start to explore their theories further, and bring in residents [and] business owners that are happy to be on camera, it would be fascinating.”

While Belanger started off with a storyboard for the project, she has since abandoned it after beginning to collect residents’ stories.

“I think I’m just going to have to throw that in the trash,” Belanger said. “I think this is something that’s going to grow organically because the synchronicities and the way all the stories are intertwining from different people from different backgrounds. I’m almost at the stage of just saying I’m going to keep my cameras rolling and just connect the dots at the end to create the series because every day, I’m standing back from what’s going on here. This is insane.”

Belanger stressed that she is filming using cameras approved for all major streaming sites in order to pitch her series, although none have accepted it, and will also post the videos to her website and Vimeo account.

The expansion of the internet has been one of the major drivers of interest in the paranormal, Belanger said.

“There was a stigma attached to it for many years, when I was growing up,” Belanger said. “But now with the internet, there’s so much information. You can go on YouTube, and type in paranormal, and the hits that those videos are getting [are] in the millions.”

Belanger is also using artificial intelligence algorithms to generate part of the footage for the series and make it more engaging.

“It’s hard to film B-roll. It’s not like I can go out and say ‘We’re going to go film that UFO at six o’clock on Tuesday,’” Belanger said. “The good thing is, now we have the use of AI. Now I can try and generate realistic images or video to add. It’s going to be faster for me to produce the remaining 49 [interviews] I’ve already filmed.”

Some of Belanger’s interviews have touched on the proposal of American computer scientist Ray Kurzweil and others that a technological singularity could possibly occur when the intelligence of machines exceeds that of humans.

“At the moment having the AI to be able to generate images is a wonderful bonus,” Belanger said. “I used to have to pay graphic designers. I remember when I was trying to design a craft for one of the documentaries I did, I had to pay a designer $4,000 to render what he felt the craft looked like.”

“I’m happy to hear anybody’s stories,” Belanger said. “They’re never going get any ridicule for me. They can relay their story on camera; I’m not guaranteeing it will make it to the final cut. But I would absolutely love for the local residents to get involved as much as they would.”

Belanger can be contacted at info@mysteriousworldtv.com or (833) SEE-MWTV.